The Internet won’t really slow down on ‘Internet Slowdown Day’

The latest online demonstration to support keeping the Internet a level playing field sounds more drastic than it is: A host of left-leaning groups are calling next Wednesday “Internet Slowdown Day” to protest proposed FCC rules that would no longer force Internet service providers to treat all online traffic equally. Tech companies — from Google to the smallest startup — oppose the change, and want to preserve what they call net neutrality.

But the internet won’t actually slow down on Wednesday, Sept. 10. At least not because of this protest. Sites participating in the protest will merely post the “spinning wheel of death” icon to mark the day and urge users to contact the FCC or Congress. As Free Press, one of the organizing groups stressed Wednesday: “Sites will employ icons that symbolize a slower Internet, but will not actually load more slowly.”

What actually might be more powerful than the spinning wheel of death are the 1 million public comments — a record — that the FCC has received on the issue. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation studied the pile and this week projected that 99 percent of them opposed allowing Internet service providers to charge for faster service. Sunlight estimated that “60 percent of comments submitted were form letters written by organized campaigns.”

As former FCC commissioner Michael Copps told us recently, he may not have read the millions of comments on an issue “but I knew they were there.”

No word that Google or Facebook or any of the big Valley names are participating in the planned slow news day. Then again, as we’ve reported, it’s been the nonprofit activist groups that have led this fight in Washington.

Activists protest in support of net neutrality outside a President Obama fundraiser in Los Angeles in May